[ShadowAce]

[mgc1122]

Perhaps maybe it’s because Vista ... uh, sucks ? Too big, too intrusive?

[Psycho_Bunny]

"We attribute [the decline] largely to the increase in developers beginning to target Linux and different Linux [distributions].

Vista's the problem.

[Moonman62]

Microsoft will simply charge more money to make up the difference.

[Publius6961]

The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse. "I think Vista probably offset some of the decline," Andrews said.

You gotta be kidding me.
Just yesterday a friend (NOT computer savvy) was complaining that the new laptop with VISTA on it did not allow installing Yahoo Messenger.

Microshaft up to its old tricks...

Windows XP is about to be installed, as soon as soon as we can find the time to deal with it long distance.

Unfortunately, the home computer world is 30% geeks and 70% normal human beings with a life.
The geeks have no problem switching when the frustration level rises enough (Protected contents?), so a good chunk of them already run Linux.

The rest of us? It's just a matter of when.

[PreciousLiberty]

Macintosh is much more widely used for desktop work. I think Vista has fueled a WHOLE lot of interest in the Mac. :-)

The latest Intel Macs, both desktop and portable, are top notch.

[avacado]

All I can say is that I am a software engineer doing digital signal processing running on 100s of clusters upon 1000s of nodes... and the very idea of having Windows on all of those machines.... well...

Bahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Windows would fall all over itself and remote administration on Windows is zilch compared to Unix. Windows is for Grandma and Grandpa to have email and photo albums.

[CodeToad]

Considering the development environment from Microsoft, Visual Studio, is also as bloated and buggy as anything else Microsoft puts out why not try something else? When you can’t trust your compiler it’s time to switch.

[kalee]

ping

[weef]

Maybe Windows developers are tired of developing a great Windows app and later have Microsoft enter that same market and take away their business. That behavior kind of squashes the enthusiasm for developing Windows apps. I’d like to see MS stick to the OS, Office, and their developer tools but leave the photo editing, music players, etc. to other companies. Problem is they have too many developers and not enough to do.

[Turbopilot]

I haven't seen any compelling reason to switch to Vista. If MS can't convince developers to start writing Vista-only software, they're going to have an even harder time migrating their user base.

My own plan is to replace some of my home and office computers this year, while I can still get XP Pro, and then not do anything until at least 2009 when Vienna is released. From what I can tell, I shouldn't have any problems bypassing Vista entirely.

[amigatec]

I have used Mandrake/Mandriva as a primary OS for 5 years now and have NEVER had to compile anything.

It just works!!!